Indiana Should Revise Medicaid Waiver Proposal

Indiana has proposed to expand Medicaid and extend health coverage to as many as 374,000 uninsured Hoosiers through the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP) 2.0.  As currently designed, however, the proposal would create barriers to coverage for low-income individuals and cause substantial numbers of people to remain uninsured, as we explain in a new paper.  The state should modify its proposal to ensure that all newly eligible adults are actually able to participate and receive necessary health care services on a timely basis.

HIP 2.0 would be a new demonstration project, or “waiver,” that incorporates features from the state’s existing Medicaid waiver, which was approved prior to the enactment of health reform and offers limited coverage to about 40,000 low-income adults.

Although Medicaid waivers give states additional flexibility in how they design their Medicaid programs, the Medicaid statute requires that waivers must test new approaches to Medicaid while promoting the program’s objective of delivering health care services to vulnerable populations that can’t otherwise afford care.  As proposed, HIP 2.0 falls short of meeting this standard in several important respects: aspects of the plan would almost certainly result in substantial numbers of low-income people being unable to receive health insurance and access care for significant periods of time.  Indiana should modify those parts of the proposal to ensure that newly eligible Medicaid beneficiaries can actually enroll in coverage and receive necessary health care services.

HIP 2.0 does drop some problematic features of the state’s existing Medicaid waiver, such as a cap on the number of enrollees and annual and lifetime dollar limits on coverage, to comply with changes that the health reform law made to Medicaid.  But the state is seeking approval to maintain certain other features of its current waiver that are inconsistent with the Medicaid expansion, such as charging premiums to people with little income and delaying the start date for coverage.  A substantial body of research, including Indiana’s own experience under its existing Medicaid waiver, demonstrates that charging premiums to people with low incomes discourages them from enrolling in and maintaining coverage.

Click here to read the full paper.